Latino groups pressed the state attorney general's office Friday to prosecute the two Riverside County sheriff's deputies involved in the 1996 televised beating of two Mexican illegal immigrants at the end of an 80-mile car chase. The request came after an announcement two weeks ago by the U.S. Justice Department that it would not prosecute Deputies Tracy Watson and Kurt Franklin on charges of violating federal civil rights laws. Members of the Mexican American Political Assn.

Going on a hunger strike in front of a government building isn't what most people would choose to do in their free time. But Tustin resident Julian Belmonte is trying to show that he's different than most folks. After his request for political asylum was denied earlier this year, Belmonte, 19, decided to go without food for 15 days to protest the decision. He began the hunger strike Friday in front of the Immigration and Naturalization Services building in Los Angeles.

Harold Ezell says he simply wants the nation's lawmakers to view firsthand the "invasion" of illegal aliens. So the controversial western commissioner for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services has sent invitations to congressmen and U.S. senators from the Western states to be his guests on nighttime tours of the U.S.-Mexico border, beginning this week.

Breaking ties with the U.S. Border Patrol, San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender on Friday announced that his officers will no longer detain suspected illegal aliens to help federal immigration officials control the border. "Due to economic conditions in Mexico and Central America and the lack of an effective federal immigration policy, San Diego has been taking the brunt of a problem which we are unable to impact," Kolender said in a prepared statement.

The assembled dignitaries couldn't help being a little nostalgic at opening ceremonies for the Alicia Parkway extension on Thursday. After all, plans for the road project were first drawn up in the 1970s, "when Jimmy Carter was President," said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach). "This shouldn't have taken so long, but then again, it was worth it."

San Diego city officials on Friday recommended that the City Council choose a Florida company to build a privately run, $6.5-million jail on four acres of county-owned land at the East Otay Mesa Correctional Complex. If built, the facility would become the first privately operated jail in California, correctional officials said. Assistant City Manager Jack McGrory on Friday recommended that council members authorize the city manager's office to negotiate with Wackenhut Corrections Corp.

Estimates of the illegal immigrant population in the United States vary widely. Following are four frequently cited numbers and how they were obtained. * -- Swati Pandey Estimate: 11 million as of March 2005 (33%) (Illegal immigrants as a percentage of all immigrants (U.S. census estimate: 34 million). Source: Pew Hispanic Center, a private nonpartisan research group that studies the U.S. Latino population. Methodology: The study's author, Jeffrey S.

With the clock running out on the alien amnesty program that ends tonight at midnight, anxious immigrants crowded federal offices Tuesday--sometimes by mistake--as officials made final appeals to those who are eligible, and have not yet applied, to do so. In Orange County, long lines of people queued up at U.S.

An Orange County civil rights group on Thursday accused the Department of Motor Vehicles of unfairly targeting Latino immigrants in the agency's crackdown on identity theft, saying at least three local residents have been charged with giving false information this year.